CHAPTER 34

I got out my road atlas. Whoever had put the note on my windshield knew my car and the license plates. I would have to do it differently, but this time I would crawl under the car, inspect it for some sort of device that would enable them to hunt me down. I crawled under the car and began the inspection, working from back to front, carefully running my fingers into every possible place where something could be placed. And sure enough, I found a cigarette package sized device tucked into the frame, secured with some sort of heavy mastic. I carefully pried it off and crawled under the car next to mine. I stuck it onto the frame. I had no idea whose car it was and no idea where he drove it, but by the time they found out where it was, I would be long gone. I found a sporting goods store where they sold fishing licenses, hunting licenses, and basic camping gear. I bought a sleeping bag and a foam pad, a small gas stove, several canisters of gas and a set of pans, nestled inside each other like Russian dolls. I bought a Coleman lantern and another jacket, this one a thick outdoorsman’s jacket. I bought a big can for water and tablets for purifying water. A young woman who worked there helped me round out my camping gear. When I was done, I knew that, with food supplies, I could stay several weeks in some out-of-the-way campground, off the grid.

That evening I pored over my maps. If I took the tiny grey-lined roads, paved and sometimes unpaved, I could go over into Oregon, go south back into Nevada and find a campground somewhere on the Marys River above Elko. There was one road that ran, straight as an arrow, south from Oregon, between two mountain ranges. An examination of the campground guide I had bought at the sporting goods store, showed several unimproved campgrounds in the National Forest there. I found one, Gance Creek, that seemed ideal. There was a turnoff to a ranch, and the road ran almost ten miles before it passed the ranch, then wound up into the mountains. The campground showed no permanent fire pits or tables, just a notification that it was open in the summer. I could go there, wait two weeks, and then go south, heading toward Colorado since it would be approaching Fall and I didn’t want to end up in the snow.

I left, once again, at night. Within a few hours, I was in Oregon, turning south. The road was narrow, not much more than a wide lane, sometimes paved, often just smooth gravel that came up into the wheel wells like rifle shots. It was mid-afternoon when I got to the ranch turnoff. The roads were straight, as if they had been planned with a laser beam, mile after mile of sagebrush and buckbrush, punctuated periodically by white-faced cattle that raised their heads at the sound of the approaching vehicle. I passed the ranch, a few low-slung buildings among a grove of cottonwoods and began to climb. Gance Creek Campground was truly isolated. There was a tiny creek that meandered through bristly brush, and evidence that cattle occasionally wandered through the campground.

I set up camp, feeling satisfied with myself. My days were quiet, reading in the folding camp chair that I had bought, collecting firewood and building a fire to keep myself warm and to cook, saving the gas stove for emergencies. It was the kind of life that I had imagined spending with my daughter. She, too, liked the outdoors and I knew that she would have liked this little clearing among the scrub oaks and pines.

I was there a week when I heard the engine. I assumed it was the rancher, checking on the cattle that I had occasionally seen on the hillsides surrounding the campground. But when the vehicle pulled into the campground it looked suspiciously like the Range Rover that I had seen in Earl Winslow’s garage, and the figure that stepped out of it was my giant, the extra large man who had stood in the driveway in Susanville.

How had he tracked me? Had I not found the device that enabled him to find me here in this isolated place? Had there been a second device planted on my Explorer?

“What the fuck do you want?” I shouted.

He stood, motionless, silent.

Then he spoke. “You will come with me.”

“No, I won’t fucking come with you. I don’t know who the fuck you are and I’m not going any place with you!”

“You have no choice.” He began to move toward me. He must be armed, I thought. But he intends to take me back to face Winslow. He’s been hired to track me down and capture me. I was the egret in the marsh and the coyote had spotted me and was about to pounce.

I reached back to where the Glock was tucked into my belt at my back. I had not been without that gun since I had set up camp. I slept with it clutched in my hand and if I dropped my trousers to take a shit, I laid it on a rock within easy reach. I brought it around and aimed it at him.

“Take one more step and I will shoot you,” I said.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think you will. Aiming a handgun like that is a special art and it’s highly likely that if you do pull the trigger, you will miss.”

“Somebody as big as you would be hard to miss,” I said as he came closer, pausing to open his jacket. I could see a gun in a holster at his waist.

“You see, we are at what might be called a standoff,” he said. “But I am trained to shoot my weapon. You are not.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know everything there is to know about you, my friend.” He took a step and I fired. The shot missed him and he reached for his gun and I fired again, this time the bullet slammed into his shoulder and he wheeled, as if he were changing direction, then turned back to me, still drawing out the gun. I fired again, this time the gun jumping in my hand, almost jumping out of my hand, and I continued to pull the trigger until it clicked, empty and he stopped, bent over, clutched at his stomach, and a grunt came from him. I had shot him again.

I stood there, waiting. He was on the ground, on his side, and I knew that I had done great damage to him. And he was surprised that I had done so, had not expected me to be accurate, had expected that he would capture me and drag me away, only he was struggling with the pain and I stepped forward. I leveled the gun at his head, not unlike the way I had aimed the gun at the head of the truck driver in West Marin.

‘No,” I said. “You will not be taking me away,” and I pulled the trigger again. The gun did not fire and I realized that I had emptied the magazine. I went over to the Explorer, reached under the driver’s seat and got out the carton of cartridges, carefully filling the magazine again. I went back to where he lay, his hands still clutching at his stomach. I raised the gun, pressed it to the side of his head and pulled the trigger. A hole appeared in his temple and his head slammed back against the ground. “And you were wrong. I was quite willing to shoot you. And I had enough shots to do the job, even though I am shitty at aiming.” The gun was warm in my hand.

It was difficult to drag his body to the edge of the campground. He must have weighed three hundred pounds. I got out my new camp shovel, the one I had used to make myself a latrine, and began to dig. It was not a deep hole. There was no point in making it deep, only deep enough to discourage foraging animals from dragging his body into view. I pushed his body into the hole. I filled up the hole and I gathered stones from the campground to cover him, and had myself a scotch. Now I had a new vehicle, a good one, a black Land Rover with four-wheel drive and the full rhino gear, something that would go anywhere. I could leave my Ford Explorer here at the campground and eventually the rancher would discover it and it would be registered to someone who had sold it to that tire dealer in Jackpot and I was in no way connected with that transaction. Unless the tire dealer got co-opted by the police, but I had the feeling that he was the kind of man who said little to the police. Still, it would be a long time before Winslow found out that his thug was dead and his car was gone, and I could convert that car into a new one easily.

This body didn’t bother me any more than the body of Winslow’s wife. He was a hired thug, and he would just as easily have killed me. There was no right or wrong about what the egret killed. It stabbed at whatever it needed to ensure its own survival. And that was what I was doing. I covered up the rocks that were piled on the giant’s body, tamped the dirt down and made my dinner, a can of beans that I opened and leaned against the coals, and two hot dogs that I put on sticks and roasted over the coals. Hot dogs and beans. Basic food. Probably not something on the menu at 221 Carmel Drive in Ross. But at 221 Carmel Drive in Ross, Earl Anthony Winslow was eating alone. Just as I was. I had taken the giant’s gun from his body and his wallet and keys. There was a driver’s license in the wallet and some cards that told me he worked for a detective agency in San Francisco. The gun was more complicated than mine, and I had taken the holster as well. I tucked them both under the driver’s seat of the Range Rover. I took the Glock that I had used and tucked it, too, under the seat. I would dispose of it later. I had a new weapon and no one would be able to connect me with the killings I had done. I broke camp, packing my things neatly on the back of Winslow’s car.

How appropriate, I thought. This one probably cost as much as that fancy Mercedes that I had blown up. Had he bought a new one? Or was he driving his wife’s little yellow Porsche? There was the distinct possibility that the giant had told someone where he was going and when he didn’t check in, someone would be sent out to check on him. So I didn’t have any time to lose. I left the keys in the Explorer. When the rancher found it, he might very well simply appropriate it, which would simplify my life. I would drive Winslow’s Range Rover to Elko and then beyond, into the Great Basin, and end up in Colorado. I would abandon the car and get myself a new used car and, once again, disappear. Only this time there wouldn’t be anyone to put a tracking device in the chassis of the car that I bought. This time I would be careful to pay only cash. This time I would, like the egret, find a new marsh where there weren’t any coyotes and Winslow would continue to eat alone.